Chinese zodiac: the 12 animals and the 60-year cycle

The Chinese zodiac (生肖, shēngxiào) names each year after an animal, in a fixed order of twelve: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. The character 羊 is translated as goat, sheep or ram depending on the source.

The animals are not the core of the system, though. It starts with the twelve earthly branches (地支), a series of twelve characters used to count years and hours; according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, the animals were added to them later. The Xinhua news agency explains that the ancients chose the twelve animals to give the branches a concrete image that is easier to remember. The pairs are given like this: 子鼠, 丑牛, 寅虎, 卯兔…

The branches also name months, days and hours. The traditional day is divided into twelve two-hour periods (时辰): the horse period (午) runs from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Handian dictionary (汉典) defines the word 属相, a synonym of 生肖, as the way of recording a person's year of birth with these twelve branches and their twelve animals.

The animal is only half of a year's name. The traditional calendar combines the twelve branches with the ten heavenly stems (天干): 甲, 乙, 丙, 丁, 戊, 己, 庚, 辛, 壬, 癸.

They are paired in order, without repeats: the first stem, 甲, with the first branch, 子, gives 甲子; then come 乙丑, 丙寅 and so on. When the ten stems run out, two branches, 戌 and 亥, are still unpaired, so the stems start again from 甲 to cover them. The result is sixty pairs, from 甲子 to 癸亥, after which the cycle begins again. This is why the word 甲子 can also mean a span of sixty years.

The system is very old. According to Britannica, the Shang (商) already counted days with these combinations, and this day count has been in use for more than 3,000 years. The ten stems first counted runs of ten days, before the branches were added to make a cycle of sixty.

An example: the lunar year that began in 2026 is 丙午, number 43 in the cycle. Xinhua explains that 丙 is linked with fire and the colour red, and that 午, the horse, also belongs to fire: hence the nicknames "red horse" and "fire horse" for this year.

A common mistake is to think the animal changes on 1 January. It changes at Lunar New Year (春节), which according to Britannica falls between 21 January and 20 February. It is a new moon: usually the second new moon after the winter solstice, more rarely the third, when a leap month comes in between.

So the date moves from year to year. The Year of the Snake (乙巳) began on 29 January 2025; because 2025 had a leap month, the Year of the Horse only began on 17 February 2026, and it lasts until 5 February 2027. A baby born on 10 February 2026 is therefore, in everyday usage, a Snake.

There is a second school, however. Fortune-tellers who cast the "eight characters" (八字) of a birth change animals at Lichun (立春, "start of spring"), the solar term that falls around 4 February: their calendar divides the year into solar months, and their year begins at Lichun. According to Chinese Wikipedia, a common compromise is that the sign of everyday life follows Lunar New Year, while the fortune-tellers' sign follows Lichun.

For our baby born on 10 February 2026, after Lichun but before New Year, the two schools do not agree: a Snake in everyday usage, a Horse for the fortune-teller.

The order of the animals is explained by a folk legend told in many versions. Here is the one summarized by Encyclopaedia Britannica.

The Jade Emperor (玉皇大帝), the most revered Daoist deity (the Buddha in another version), holds a race: the first twelve to finish will enter the calendar, in the order they arrive. There is a river to cross. The clever rat climbs onto the ox's back and jumps off at the last moment: it comes first, and the ox second.

And the cat? In one version, it had asked the rat to wake it on the morning of the race; the rat forgot, and the cat arrived too late. In others, the rat "forgets" on purpose, or pushes the cat off the ox's back into the river. That, says the legend, is why cats hate rats. The Chinese version reported by the Guangming Daily also blames the rat (老鼠) for tricking the cat, which misses the Jade Emperor's roll call.

The same article offers a more down-to-earth explanation: there is no trace of the cat in objects from before the Han; it only became familiar from the Eastern Han (东汉) on, when the list, attested since the Warring States period, was already full.

In Vietnam, however, the cat does have a place: the Vietnamese zodiac replaces the rabbit with the cat, and the ox with the water buffalo. The usual explanation is sound: 卯, the rabbit's branch, is pronounced Mão or Mẹo there, close to mèo, "cat".

In December 1975, archaeologists excavated tomb no. 11 at Shuihudi (睡虎地), in Yunmeng County (云梦), Hubei. It held more than a thousand bamboo slips placed there around 217 BCE, under the Qin (秦朝). Among them were two "day books" (日书, Rìshū): manuals telling lucky days from unlucky ones.

The first contains a chapter on thieves (盗者). Depending on the day of the theft, it describes what the culprit looks like, matching each of the twelve branches with an animal. According to the Guangming Daily, this list is already "roughly close" to today's, without being identical. In April 1986, a Qin tomb of the same period at Fangmatan (放马滩), in Tianshui (天水), Gansu, yielded two more day books, also with a section on thieves.

So at first these animals marked days, not years of birth. The first list exactly identical to ours is found in the Lunheng (论衡) by Wang Chong (王充), a thinker of the Eastern Han.

Was the zodiac born in China or brought from elsewhere? The question has been debated. From these texts, the Guangming Daily concludes that it arose in China before the Qin and was fixed under the Han (汉朝).

Every twelve years your animal comes back: this is your 本命年 (běnmìngnián), the year you turn 12, 24, 36 or 48. Folk tradition does not see it as a lucky year but as a risky one: you are said to "offend Tai Sui" (犯太岁), the deity who presides over each year and is associated with the planet Jupiter.

The remedy is red, the colour of celebrations, believed to keep evil away. During their 本命年, people wear red underwear, a red string on the wrist, a red belt (红腰带), sometimes even red insoles. According to the South China Morning Post, these items should not be bought for yourself but given to you, ideally by an older relative.

The belt shows that homophones are never far away. According to a 2013 People's Daily Online report, it should be made of cotton, not silk satin, because 绸缎 (chóuduàn, "silks") sounds like 愁 (chóu, "worry") and 断 (duàn, "to break"). It is tied on before New Year and can be taken off after the fifth day of the year (破五).

In 2026, a Year of the Horse, it is people born in a Horse year, such as 2014, 2002 or 1990, who are living their 本命年.

To ask someone's sign, you do not say "what animal are you?" but 你属什么？ (Nǐ shǔ shénme?). Here the verb 属 (shǔ) means "to be born in the year of": it is the verb used for zodiac animals.

The answer is 我属 followed by the animal: 我属龙 (Wǒ shǔ lóng), "I'm a Dragon". To return the question, just add 你呢？ ("and you?"), as in 我属马，你呢？

Since the animal comes back every twelve years, the answer also places the person's age to within twelve years.

To practise, go back to the table at the top: each animal is used as it is after 属, as a single syllable (属牛, 属虎, 属猴…).